A computer system typically includes a monitor having a display screen for presenting information, such as text and images, to the user. The display screen can be configured into a window environment in which separate areas of the display screen, called windows, are used to present information to the user, to display information entered by the user or to interact with the user. Each window, which is typically rectangular in shape, can present or represent different information or different views of the same information. The window may include various features such as a menu bar, tool bar, status bar, etc. An example of a popular software system that employs window environment is the Windows™ 2000 operating system, which is commercially available from Microsoft™ Corporation.
In a window environment, an application program executing on the computer system defines a set of windows that are associated with that application. Typically, these windows are displayed within a single container (also known as a frame) that includes user interface features of the application. Users can usually request a horizontal, vertical or cascade arrangement of windows within the frame to achieve better visibility of the windows and more convenient access to the windows. However, the problem with window visibility and access still exists for the application that permit the users to open a large number of windows at the same time. One example of such an application is a debugging application that allows a software developer to debug a software program running in a multi-core (one target with several processors) or multi-target (several targets are connected in a certain way) environment. That is, the user may need to open simultaneously a window to view source code, a set of windows to view internal registers of each processor, a set of windows to view stack data associated with each active function within the program code, etc. This large number of windows overloads the screen, making it difficult to provide convenient access to each window positioned within the frame.